Star Wars Battlefront: Battle of Jakku Hands-On

by byte clay

Star Wars Battlefront is a solid Star Wars experience that delivers some great immersion and incredible moment to moment gameplay. The problem with the game however is the repetition in maps and relatively low amount of content that makes it feel a bit stale after putting a good chunk of hours in. Looking to expand on that content is The Battle of Jakku content, which coincides with the upcoming release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in theaters December 18. While Jakku does add some variety, it just never feels like enough, and the new mode is interesting for a bit, but suffers the same fate as the core Battlefront experience.

Jakku is a sand ship graveyard in its simplest dilution, with a beached Star Destroyer serving as a centerpiece in the background of the set. With blue hue engines firing up and lighting bouncing off the flat gray in interesting ways, the scale of the background dressing is simply immense. Pair that with an intense battle going on within the outer limits of Jakku’s atmosphere and you’ve got a seriously interesting skybox. Red and green lasers dart across the sky, with large ships moving throughout the scenary above. Near the beginning of the matches you’ll also get treated to a Star Destroyer falling to the surface, a site that simply must be witnessed and taken in, as it’s absolutely gorgeous to watch the monster fall to the surface, kicking up a sandstorm while explosions bloom through the dust of the destruction. It’s simply awesome.

The Battle of Jakku DLC features a new game mode in Turning Point, a game mode that will be instantly familiar to Rush fans of the Battlefield franchise, the rebels begin the match pushing back the imperials in an assault. Three control points come up on the map and the rebels must simply capture one, once that’s done the rebels push forward where there may be more or less control points until the final phase of the mode where there is just one singular control point, and infinite chaos within. Turning Point mixes things up, but only just. It never feels like an entirely new game mode, and while it’s got quirks like snowspeeders in one phase for the rebels, and the next has AT-ST’s for the empire, it just doesn’t give the satisfaction of a real fleshed out new mode that will live and breathe for a true stretch of time.

When said and done The Battle of Jakku does add some seriously necessary variety to the rotation in Star Wars Battlefront. Whether that’s enough will only be told by time, as the consensus on Battlefront has largely been that it has a lot of good, but just needs more to keep players motivated long term. Jakku is a cool planet, and while similar to Tattooine, it is distinct as weaving through the skeletons of downed TIE fighters and other empire hardware is fun, and the elevation changes do provide some good opportunity to flank, one map and mode alone can’t keep players going for too long.